Now That’s What I Call Weekender, Vol. Whatever

Here’s a quick preview of tomorrow’s section. Of course, if you’re into immediate gratification, you can look up the entire articles RIGHT NOW on MySA.

Gig of the week

Joe Buck Yourself, Dick Wiggler and the River City Rebels, the Tex Pistols and Satantonio, Sunday at Jiggers. As music writer Jim Beal Jr. points out, what’s not to like about the bill? Even if the bands suck, the names alone are a hoot. And from all accounts, they don’t — suck, that is. This mix of twisted country and punk is headed by JBY, which is an actual person (he’s Hank III’s bassist) and not a band.

Event of the week

“Rock the Ovaries,” Friday at the Limelight. Beal’s having a pretty entertaining week. His Night Lights column includes a preview of this female-centric event, a benefit for the Bexar County battered women’s and children’s shelter. It would have been perfect if it could have been paired with a male-oriented Cancer Society benefit called “Rock the Prostate.”

No-show Larry

As I mentioned earlier this week, Larry the Cable Guy’s new movie, “Witless Protection,” isn’t being screened in advance for critics, just like Larry’s previous efforts (“Delta Farce,” “Health Inspector”). Usually, I point out the shortsightedness of this practice, but with Larry’s movies, it makes perfect sense. Is there any doubt what you’re gonna get? And does anyone need a review to decide whether or not to see a Larry the Cable Guy movie? Anyway, if the dialogue is an incisive as snippets from the commercials suggest — “Are you crazy?” “No, I’m Larry.” — “Witless” may be all the description you need.

Oscar stuff

I will give Larry the Cable Guy credit — his upcoming new movie inspired me to name his most recent effort, “Delta Farce,” for Best Picture in this year’s Oscar picks chart (see Page 7). The chart features a panel of experts (and me) trying to guess the winners of the top six categories — picture, director and the four acting categories. I decided when I started doing this thing that I’d take one for the team; I’d make sure I finished last so our other experts could save face if their picks bombed. No matter how badly they did, ol’ Robert would always be bringing up the rear. So clip the chart, make your own guesses and mark our wrong picks as you watch Sunday night.

Dedicated watchers of this annual feature — all three of you — know I’ve hit upon a rough sort of formula for the acting categories. The actor and actress categories usually involve the right name in the wrong film, i.e. George Clooney in “Ocean’s Thirteen” instead of “Michael Clayton.” Hilarious, no?

And the supporting categories have been reserved lately for non-human stars, like Wilson the Volleyball in “Cast Away,” the shirt in “Brokeback Mountain,” the pants in “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” Kumar’s bag of pot in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” Scrat in “Ice Age:The Meltdown” and Saphira the Dragon in “Eragon.”

And occasionally I get one half-right in spite of myself. I awarded myself a half-point last year for picking Forest Whitaker in the actor category. Whitaker won as expected for “The Last King of Scotland”; I picked him for his voice part in “Everyone’s Hero.”

As for the real experts, our own Larry Ratliff looks to repeat, just like the Spurs. He picked ‘em all last year, including picking the correct upset — Alan Arkin winning supporting actor for “Little Miss Sunshine” when everyone else liked Eddie Murphy in “Dreamgirls.”